


Hidalgo

by boychik



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Drabble, Family, Gen, Memories, infirmary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 18:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boychik/pseuds/boychik





	Hidalgo

Kawara Ryouta will never know the feeling of being as tall as his father. He will never know what it’s like to wrap his arms like two tight brown vines around his body and feel the tense knot in his throat become unbearable as he stares down at the silver strands in his father’s hair that used to be as dark and thick as the midnight sky.

Instead, his father will be with the other man. His mother said that he was a work colleague who sometimes came to the house when Ryouta was too young to remember. (Almost everything happened when Ryouta was too young to remember—his birth, his mother painstakingly building him a strong, light nest which he then promptly fell out of, their single family trip to the beach when dad had boldly seized the chance to leave the lab for a few days. His earliest memory is always of the girl’s giant round eyes, shiny as jewels, blinking in concern for a moment before he is scooped up in huge palms and returned to his nest.) Ryouta’s mother said the work colleague didn’t make a huge impression on her—slight, quiet, a bit awkward in speech and movement—but then again, they had hardly spoken, even over the course of several years. Apparently he was important to his father, though. He saw him in the hospital. Before it happened. The work colleague did. Did Ryouta? That’s another thing that Ryouta can’t quite remember, even though it’s as fixed in his mind as indelible ink.

\---

The two assistants are a cute addition to the lab, the perfect foil to the doctor. Ryouta’s never been comfortable in Doctor Iwamine’s presence, despite the innocuous description from his mother and the close bond he had with his father. He was too sterile; even his hands were unyieldingly icy as he pressed the pulse of Ryouta’s vital veins. For all Doctor Iwamine’s silence, impenetrable as his medicine cabinet or stainless steel tools, Ryouta felt like he hated him as he sat there on the cot, prickling like he was picked up by the flashbeam of a gunmetal gray UFO and waiting to be probed. Miru and Kaku’s flailing arms can’t help but break the mood, cast a forcefield potent enough to break the tension. The no-good atmosphere disappears like a vaporous ghost once the twins get to cheering _Meri Kuri! Meri Kuri!_ as earnestly as a pair of wide brown eyes. Ryouta closes his own eyes and touches two fingers to the skin and bone above his pumping heart. Meri Kuri indeed. But he thinks instead: _Thank you, thank you. Thank you for saving me._


End file.
